Saturday, September 29, 2012

How to LIve Long and Prosper

Having reached my 60's and still being in good health, I want to keep
it that way. My relatives tend to live very long and hopefully, I have
inherited the right genes to nudge that along. However, from what I
read and hear, even people with an excellent gene cocktail can enhance
the vitality of their later years, and add to them, with a few simple
steps.

Even
more exciting is that almost anybody can improve their health and
longevity just by attending to a few simple tasks. Some of these
"tasks" are actually quite pleasurable and rewarding, and therein lies
even more good news.

I'm going to skip the parts about nutrition
and exercise per se. Those two areas are generating tons of literature,
and often conflicting reports about the value of this nutritional item,
that diet, or some particular exercise or exercise program. The bottom
line here is that if you are not staying on top of everything going on,
start taking a daily multivitamin, take regular walks or other
physically demanding activity, get some rest, learn to relax, and see
your doctor regularly.

Now, let's talk about the two other things
that anybody can do to help their body and brain survive longer and in
better health. Let's talk about activity and connectivity.

Activity:

Yes,
I know I mentioned "exercise" already. While exercise certainly IS
activity and DOES fit into this discussion, I want to look at activity
from a slightly different angle for the moment. When I use the word
"activity" here, I really mean...well...activity. Having a wide range
of activities in your life pushes a lot of physical and mental buttons
that help keep the juices flowing. This can be anything from taking the
grandkids to the zoo, to gardening (exercise...okay, taking the
grandkids to the zoo is exercise), needlepoint, following sports,
keeping up with the news, writing letters to the editor, working
crossword puzzles, reading books and so on. More good news. Sex
qualifies as a beneficial activity!

The point is that when we
regularly produce interest and challenge for our bodies and minds, they
respond by staying a little younger a little longer. While aging and
its effects are ultimately inevitable, the pathway we travel and the
experiences we have along the way are very much under our control most
of the time.

Years ago, I was the business manager for a mental
health facility in Florida. We had a geriatrics program. It was
heart-breaking to see these people, many of whom seemed perfectly
healthy for their age, just sit and stare, ask the same questions over
and over, or retreat into some internal closet where they waited for
death.

Dianne, the RN in charge of the geriatric program, told me
that most of those people should not have wound up there. They had
simply slid down the slippery slope that begins to become created when
we start to lose interest in people and events around us. As friends
their age began to pass away, as children moved off to start their lives
elsewhere, as society found new entertainments and interests about
which they knew little, they began to barricade off parts of their lives
until they found themselves carted off to a geriatric program in the
basement of a local church while they waited for their blank or boring
days to end.

Dianne explained that often something as simple as a
hobby or reconnecting with a loved one or finding new contacts and
interests was all that was needed to produce almost miraculous changes
in the person...or to prevent them becoming isolated and aged in the
first place.

This brings up the second point.

Connectivity:

By
connectivity, I simply mean being a part of the community. It has been
shown that married people, for example, tend to live longer and
healthier lives than those living alone. Interestingly enough, the
state of the marriage has less to do with it than the existence of the
relationship itself. People with pets tend to live longer healthier
lives than those without. As alluded to above, those without
connections to other members of society may age more rapidly, both
mentally and physically, than if they were so connected.

Another
point of this, by the way, is that being a part of some "society", large
or small, can be a make or break factor in this aging stuff. People
who go to church and who are a part of that community, or people who
take part time jobs or volunteer can find a position which helps define
them and anchor them to the living, breathing community around them. So
many people, my father included, die shortly after retirement having
accepted the loss of their defining job or position as an end to a
lively definition of self. Many researchers have speculated that no
longer having a context and definition of who and what they are
contributes to an earlier decline and death.

While there is no
magic bullet as yet to prevent the effects and ultimate result of aging,
by maintaining an interest in life, remaining an active participant,
and interweaving your life with the lives of others may be a step
towards a longer, healthier senior life and lifestyle. It's more fun,
too!